Paper to Premiere

Here’s a quick tutorial from our designer Nikki on how to get hand-drawn lettering into your video project using Photoshop. (The lettering can be seen in our showreels Summer’s Here and A Cowboy’s Boot.)

You will need:

Tracing or white bond paper

Your favorite black pen

Scanner

Photoshop

1. Draw the words or title you would like in your video project. (If you aren’t confident with your drawing skills, check out Skillshare. They have lots of online classes on hand-lettering taught by well-known designers.)

2. Scan and open the image in Photoshop.

3. Use Levels ( Image > Adjustments > Levels or ⌘L) to remove the grays in the image by using the white and black eye droppers to pick the lightest and darkest places in the image respectively.

4. In the Channels palette, click the dashed circle at the bottom (the “Load channel as selection” button).

5. In the Layers palette, click “add vector mask,” which is the button at the bottom of the palette that looks like a rectangle with a circle in it. This will mask out the layer using the selection you got from step 4. You will need to invert the mask by hitting ⌘I or Image > Adjustments > Invert.

6. On the layer, you can use the brush tool to paint the color you would like the type to be.

7. Save this file as a PSD and you can import it into Premiere. (You can import the entire file or just the layer with your art on it.)